Best movies on Apple TV+

Matt Damon and Casey Affleck headline this Boston-set crime caper, which provides a near-perfect blend of comedy and action. Ex-marine Rory (Damon), now in dire straits, joins a heist during the city’s local elections. But when things go awry, he and a fellow robber, Cobby (Affleck), are left fighting for their lives, with only Rory’s therapist (Hong Chau) willing to help these two blue-collar desperados.

Director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) handles the set pieces adeptly, including one almighty car chase, but it’s the character-driven script, co-written by Affleck, that really sings.

James Mottram

A hugely impressive Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) headlines this sturdy drama from film-maker Erica Tremblay. Gladstone plays the resourceful Jax, who takes her niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson) on the road to search for the girl’s missing mother.

This is an immersive look at heavyweight issues that affect Native American communities, but it also boasts layers of joy. Tremblay and co bring a wealth of authenticity to the story, yet manage it all with a light touch.

James Mottram

Love becomes a game of percentages in this intriguing sci-fi drama. Jessie Buckley plays Anna, who works at the institute where a revolutionary technique sees a machine calculating a couple’s compatibility by analysing one of their extracted fingernails. The rub comes as Anna, who is in a relationship with Ryan (The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White), feels drawn to her colleague, Amir (the ever-reliable Riz Ahmed).

Finding emotional depth in the outlandish premise, Buckley grounds the film, and director/co-writer Christos Nikou (Apples) delivers a story that is unique and thoughtful.

James Mottram

You’ve seen Tom Hanks as a captain of a hijacked ship and now he’s donning the sailing cap once again to play a US Navy commander in Greyhound – Apple TV+’s war film set in the early 1940s. Based on CS Forester’s novel The Good Shepherd, Hanks stars as Commander Ernest Krause, a captain in charge of a merchant ship convoy when it’s attacked by submarines in the Battle of the Atlantic in 1942.

Unable to premiere in cinemas due to the pandemic, Greyhound became one of the biggest films to debut on Apple TV+ last year and with the likes of Stephen Graham, Rob Morgan, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Tom Brittney and Devin Druid rounding out the cast of this war drama, the 90-minute flick is easily up there with the best of 2020 also.

The Toy Story movies owe a lot to The Velveteen Rabbit, a 1921 novel by Margery Williams about a toy that can speak to other toys but longs to be seen as “real” by its owner. The story’s now been given a sturdy, reverential new dramatisation.

One Christmas, young William (Phoenix Laroche) receives a velveteen rabbit (voiced by Alex Lawther) that gets to meet the other toys in the playroom — a voluble crew voiced by Helena Bonham Carter, Lois Chimimba and Paterson Joseph, among others. Stop-motion-style animation and cartoons are mixed nimbly with live action.

Jack Seale

Eve Hewson is on fire as a foul-mouthed Irishwoman on a mission to learn the guitar in this salty musical comedy from writer/ director John Carney. Hewson plays Flora, a single mum with a delinquent son, who takes up the instrument and invests in online lessons courtesy of the LA-based Jeff (Joseph Gordon- Levitt) — much to the annoyance of her failed-musician ex (Jack Reynor).

As the man behind Once and Sing Street, Carney has form with the genre and Dublin setting, and he’s onto another winner here.

Emma Simmonds

“I’m a tough son of a bitch,” Michael J Fox tells director Davis Guggenheim during one of the interviews in this remarkable and heartfelt documentary. As we come to see, he really is. The film charts Fox’s early struggles to find work to his eventual global stardom thanks to 1985 sci-fi classic Back to the Future. Cleverly edited footage from his performances over the years, coupled with the occasional body double, illustrate what life was like for this energetic young Canadian, right up to the moment he awoke with a trembling little finger, the first sign of his early onset Parkinson’s disease. The end result is a fantastic, pity-free account of an extraordinary man determined to live his life at top speed, even as every doctor on screen begs him to slow down.

Jayne Nelson

This tense thriller from director Jon S Baird (Stan & Ollie) tells the true story of the legal wrangle to obtain international rights to the video game Tetris in the late 1980s. Taron Egerton stars as Dutch businessman Henk Rogers, who travels to the USSR against the backdrop of Cold War tensions after successfully convincing Nintendo of the game’s potential. Upon his arrival, he forms an alliance with the game’s creator Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Yefremov), but comes up against a rogue’s gallery of cartoonish antagonists, from dodgy rival businessman Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam) to malevolent KGB agent Valentin Trifonov (Igor Grabuzov).

The film takes a little while to get going, but settles into a nice groove following Henk’s arrival in Moscow. And Lorne Balfe’s score makes excellent use of the iconic Tetris theme tune.

Patrick Cremona

A tale of con artists and wealthy marks, Sharper is a smartly written thriller that – almost – manages to stay one step ahead of its audience. Told in segments, it centres on good-natured bookstore manager Tom (Justice Smith), who falls for a customer (Briana Middleton) who isn’t quite what she seems. As the story weaves back and forth, it introduces others into their orbit, including Tom’s father (John Lithgow), his new partner (Julianne Moore) and her troubled offspring (Sebastian Stan). The film suffers slightly from a lack of depth, but British director Benjamin Caron (The Crown) gives it a slick, Succession-like sheen.

James Mottram

In this fact-based drama set in Louisiana in 1863, Will Smith plays a slave labourer who is separated from his wife and family, and brutalised in a Confederate Army work camp. Making a daring escape through the swamps, he faces alligators, leeches and snakes, and is pursued by Ben Foster’s racist white tracker. What follows is a fairly conventional chase flick from Antoine Fuqua (The Equalizer), as our hero attempts to reach freedom on the Union side of the Civil War front line, where President Lincoln has already abolished slavery.

The action is convincingly staged and Smith delivers a stirring portrayal of suffering, but the film lacks the emotional depth necessary to truly involve its audience in what is a vital history lesson.

Trevor Johnston

The multi-generational appeal of Only Murders in the Building (Disney+) has given Selena Gomez — previously a singer and actress with a fairly young audience, having started out as a child star on the Disney Channel — a new lease of professional life. New admirers will get a flavour of the journey she’s been on with this confessional documentary film, in which she opens up about her mental-health problems and the stresses of a life where success and privilege come with high expectations and self-doubt that have, on occasion, felt crippling.

Jack Seale

Some stunningly crisp archive footage, particularly of old American chat and variety TV shows, combines with previously unheard personal recordings to create this rounded portrait of one of jazz’s most influential players. The film is sensitive to the difficult position Armstrong occupied in American popular culture, representing as he did a black artist who was sometimes seen as a safe pair of hands by white audiences and promoters, but who was also acutely aware of his heritage and was willing to undertake the risks involved in becoming a civil rights campaigner. A complex man is vividly drawn.

Jack Seale

Zac Efron stars in this refreshing comedy adventure based on a true story. In 1968, former merchant seaman John “Chickie” Donohue decides to deliver beers to his soldier friends out in Vietnam as a show of solidarity. There, he encounters a seen-it-all photojournalist (Russell Crowe) and discovers the very real nightmare the young rookies face. In his first movie since the Oscar-winning Green Book, director Peter Farrelly delivers a warm tribute to friendship, while a dynamic Efron spearheads a tremendous cast that includes Bill Murray as a New York bartender.

James Mottram

In 1964, Bahamas-raised Sidney Poitier became the first black actor to win an Academy Award, breaking the “black ceiling” and inspiring others to follow. Not bad for a boy born in 1927 to poor Miami farmers. He would become Hollywood’s biggest box-office star in 1967 and moved behind the camera to direct the smash-hit comedy Stir Crazy.

But as this frank, cheery and broad-ranging documentary underlines, Poitier’s legacy extended farther than his film work. Among the contributors assembled, Spike Lee credits him as a key figure in the struggle for civil rights and in later life he became a diplomat on the world stage.

Andrew Collins

With its optimistic view of humanity and light handling of deeper themes, this comedy drama is a touching charmer. Cooper Raiff, who also writes and directs, plays the recently graduated Andrew. With no plan for what direction to take forward, he has moved back home. A potential, if odd, job avenue opens up when he takes his little brother to a bar mitzvah where Andrew’s knack at getting the kids on the dance floor sees a queue of parents book him for similar parties. This means he repeatedly encounters engaged mum Domino (Dakota Johnson) and her autistic daughter Lola (Vanessa Burghardt). Andrew finds an immediate connection with both, becoming a babysitter for Lola as it seems Domino might be also starting to fall for his charms.

Amber Wilkinson

It was something of a surprise when CODA was named Best Picture at the 2022 Oscars – and it marked a huge win for Apple, especially given its competitor Netflix is still waiting for its first big prize. The film itself is a relatively low-key feel-good affair, telling the story of Ruby – a hearing child of deaf adults who helps with her family fishing business while also hoping to follow her passions as a singer.

Based on the French film The Belier Family, CODA features some great performances – with Emilia Jones and Oscar-winner Troy Kotsur especially standing out – and includes several well-executed emotional moments, which make it worth a watch even if it isn’t the most accomplished Best Picture winner of all time.

Numerous filmmakers – from Orson Welles and Akira Kurosawa to Roman Polanski and Justin Kurzel – have tried their hand at adapting The Scottish Play for the big screen over the years, and Joel Coen, in his first film as a solo director, was the latest to have a go. The result is a black and white epic that for the most part succeeds, even if it doesn’t quite reach the heights of some of the aforementioned efforts.

Across the board, the performances are of a very high standard – Denzel Washington is terrific in the title role and Kathryn Hunter is especially sensational as The Witches – and Coen consistently stages the action with wit and invention. The Oscar-nominated cinematography from Bruno Delbonnel, meanwhile, is frequently sublime – and several haunting images will live in your head for some time afterwards.

Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon have delivered several of the best animated films of the last decade – including The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea – and this 2020 release was another major triumph. It follows the story of Robyn, a young girl who makes a surprising and life-changing friend after she travels with her father to hunt the last wolf pack.

Combining beautiful animation, a brilliant story and a terrific voice cast that includes Sean Bean and Tommy Tiernan, Wolfwalkers is a bewitching and captivating film that feels timeless and profound – told with an extremely rich sense of imagination.

Directed by Sofia Coppola, On the Rocks stars Bill Murray (Ghostbusters) and Rashida Jones (The Office) as father-daughter duo Felix and Laura, who begin to suspect Laura’s husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) of being unfaithful. With the help of her longtime playboy father, Laura starts to look into whether her suspicions are correct and as a result, builds a stronger relationship with Felix.

Featuring electric chemistry between its two leads, On the Rocks is a charming comedy-drama which may not stand-out among Coppola’s other titles like Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette, but is still an enjoyable watch nonetheless.

While Hala somehow flew under the radar of many film-lovers when it was released in 2019, Minhal Baig’s powerful drama is an insightful take on teenage self-discovery with a terrific performance from rising star Geraldine Viswanathan.

The Blockers star plays the titular Hala Masood, a 17-year-old Pakistani American Muslim girl who struggles to pursue her love of skateboarding whilst dealing with the values of her family and her mother in particular. When she develops a crush on Jesse (Jack Kilmer), a boy at her school, Hala finds herself torn between pleasing her family, who are planning an arranged marriage, and her own wishes.

Tom Holland returns to his dramatic roots in Cherry, an Apple original crime drama from Avengers directors Anthony and Joseph Russo. Based on Nico Walker’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, Cherry stars Holland as a student who enlists in the army to get over a recent breakup and develops PTSD after watching a friend die on duty.

Following Cherry as he becomes addicted to OxyContin and begins to lead a life of crime, the drama is a harrowing look at life for many Americans who return from active duty with horrifying trauma.

Justin Timberlake is back on the big screen in Palmer, a drama from actor and director Fisher Stevens. The Social Network star plays the titular Eddie Palmer, a former high school footballer who has just finished his 12-year prison sentence for theft and attempted murder, and is living with his grandmother (June Squibb) when he takes up a job as a school janitor.

As Palmer tries to piece his life back together post-prison, he forms a friendship with his young neighbour Sam, whose troubled home life threatens to disrupt his education. With Ted Lasso‘s Juno Temple and True Detective’s J.D. Evermore putting in impressive performances, Palmer is a touching drama which navigates themes of family and friendship with skill.

Starring The Falcon and the Winter Soldier‘s Anthony Mackie and the cinematic legend that is Samuel L. Jackson, The Banker tells the story of Bernard Garrett, who in 1954 wants to get into real estate but struggles due to the racist attitudes of the time. When he meets Joe Morris (Jackson), a wealthy club owner, the two convince a white man to pose as the front of the company in meetings to gain sales.

With Nicholas Hoult, Nia Long, Colm Meaney, Taylor Black and Paul Ben-Victor rounding out the cast, The Banker is a period drama held up by the impressive performances from its stars.